It's easy. Just listen to what Troy White has written in his recent Word Wealth blog:

"It costs one-sixth as much to sell something to one of your existing clients than it costs to go out and find a new customer. And yet, almost every single company I talk to spends two to three times more effort on finding new clients than investing in old."

It doesn't take being a rocket scientist to figure out that you should be paying more attention to your current customers -- and selling to them -- than trying to uncover, attract, dig up, or otherwise snare new customers.

You should read more of what Troy White and the rest of his companion bloggers have to say at Duct Tape Marketing.

Saturday, July 30, 2005

"The top results in a Google search for "Jayne Dennis" are a Web page with a photo of the B-list actress posing on a red carpet, and a fan site full of snapshots and gossip about Ms. Dennis's relationship with actor Keanu Reeves.

"The twist: Jayne Dennis doesn't exist -- not in the real world, at least. She is a figment of writer Bret Easton Ellis's imagination and a character in his upcoming novel, Lunar Park. The woman pictured on JayneDennis.com is actually a model, and readers who click around on the site can eventually find a link to the publisher's official site for the book.

"The fake Web sites came from Farah Miller, manager of new media at Mr. Ellis's U.S. publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, and by the book's U.K. publisher, Picador. Ms. Miller has also created a profile for the protagonist's teenage son Robby on social-networking site MySpace.com, and plans to solicit help from Mr. Ellis's fans to maintain it."

Thus begins an article on Using Fiction to Sell Fiction in Wall Street Journal Online. To read the entire story, which features some new ways to market novels, go to: online.wsj.com.

Let me give you a good example. Lets say you sell a product that teaches people how to swing a bat properly and is aimed at baseball and softball players (and their parents). What you do is you hang back and you proceed to watch some baseball games, waiting for one of the big name batters to make some significant batting mistake. When they do (and they will because no one is perfect) you send a press release that says:

“Holy Crap! Did you See The Mistake Barry Sosa Made At Bat?”

You then talk about the error, that was made, say what the correction is, and give a link to a page on your website that talks about common batting errors and how to fix them, and gives contact information for reaching you by voice. And you had better answer the phone, and if you miss the call you had better call back promptly.

Let me reiterate what I just said. The phone number you give goes to you. Not your secretary. Not your marketing VP. You.

That press release gets sent out to every single sports reporter in the country (or at least to those that you know about), by fax (not email, not B.S. internet media press release, by fax) well before the game is over. You just became a sports reporter's best friend. You’ll probably get written about by a very significant percentage of the sports writers. But you may find yourself getting called for interviews by both TV and radio personalities.

You’ll find that article popping above the number one search term for things like “baseball” and “hitting” or “batting.”

You see, the technique I just mentioned allows you to solve a reporter's problem. How to find news that is actually news. Any idiot can report the scores and the newspapers know that. But the reporters that pick up your “story” will be heroes to the newspapers because it’ll be something interesting. It’ll be about something that happened to a “celebrity” and explains how to “fix it.” All it takes is imagination and the willingness to keep your eyes open and “exploit” current events to your favor.

Did you just hear about some bad business decision by some major celebrity? That’s good news if you do almost anything related to the financial sector.

Is the price of gas going up? That’s good news if you do almost anything that helps to extend a car’s fuel economy.

But you have to be willing to be bold, to use your imagination. Notice that the headline above may actually “offend” some people. Believe it or not, that’s a good thing. Now, you don’t want to go out of your way to be offensive, but at the same time, some people are always offended by anything that is bold and out of the ordinary.

If you want your company, your web site, to be picked up by the news you have to stand out. You have to be bold. You have to be willing to stand out from the crowd. Some people are going to be offended by that.

===

To read the entire article, which provides great advice on getting to the top of Google, go to SEOChat.com.

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Many people have been commenting on my last post about Amazon.com bestsellers. I need to answer some of those commentaries because they are inaccurate and misleading. Here goes:

1. 1001 Ways to Market Your Books is not published by PublishAmerica. They do sell it to their customers, but Open Horizons, my company, publishes my book and has done so from the beginning (under the name of my old company Ad-Lib Publications and then, once I sold that, under Open Horizons). I will also be publishing the new 6th edition when it comes out in November.

2. Amazon.com does not have a flaw. And no one is manipulating such a flaw. Amazon simply lists the bestselling titles as they occur. If you as an author or publisher can get your book to the top of the list, even for an hour or a day, that's an accomplishment. It's not that easy to do. That's why so many people fail, even when they've taken a course or read a book or checked out my web site on how to do such a bestseller campaign on Amazon.

3. People know that becoming an Amazon.com bestseller does not mean that the book is a bestseller elsewhere, but people do pay attention to such sales. Foreign rights buyers, book club buyers, larger publishers have all contacted people who have been successful at creating an Amazon.com bestseller. And for good reason. Such an achievement, while temporary, does say that the author/publisher is willing to do what is necessary to get attention and to sell a book. That is significant.

4. I do get a referral fee if you sign up for the Amazon.com bestseller promotion. That link is a referral link. I'm not ashamed of getting a referral. I think the program is good. I know people who have done it successfully. I know others who have done Amazon.com campaigns successfully without the course. Indeed, I have told people many times that the essence of such a campaign is outline on my web site for free: http://www.bookmarket.com/jason.html.

5. I know authors who knew about the details of the program and still signed up for the course -- simply because they wanted to have someone guide them through the process and help them complete all the steps properly. Some people want their hands held for them while they do something like this. I see nothing wrong with this.

6. You are not harvesting email addresses from other people's newsletter lists. When you do such a promotion, only the people who buy as a result of the promotion are added to the list. They have raised their hands and have said: "I want this book and I want all the freebies as well. Please let me get all of them." Nobody is being spammed. No list owner would buy into such a proposal. Not if they respected the members of their list.

7. Reputable publishers and editors are doing Amazon.com promotions all the time. They do see it as being valuable. I know many of them. They have no problem in someone working within the system to stand out. Every major publisher does the same thing with the New York Times and other bestseller lists. They do everything they can to get their books onto those lists. While getting onto such lists is harder than a one-day appearance on Amazon.com, these lists are just as susceptible to being manipulated -- only the cost in time and money is much higher. I know these lists can be manipulated. I've worked with several authors who have done it.

8. Obviously some people, including another ezine, have completely misunderstood what I wrote in my post a few days ago about Amazon.com. No list owner who participates in an Amazon.com bestseller promotion is going to add anyone to their list who is not interested in what they have to offer. Ideally, they mail to the customer once asking if they'd like to be on their list, probably with an offer for another free report if they say yes. This is an absolutely legitimate way to add people to your list. There is nothing about spamming in any of this. And this is nothing like harvesting names or emails from a discussion list. I obviously was incomplete in my previous written statement for anyone to interpret it as spamming or harvesting. My apologies for being unclear.

9. Anyone who thinks that bestseller lists reflect what people are actually buying have no idea how such lists are compiled. The New York Times bestseller list is actually a self-fulfilling prophecy. They send participating bookstores a list of the books they think will be selling well in a particular week. They then ask the bookstores, in essence, to tell them if they are right or not. Well, 90%+ of time, of course, they are right. Most booksellers won't write in the title of a book that is selling much better, and even if they do, it won't count for much unless many others bookstores do the same. What are the chances that will happen? Not good. So the list becomes a list of the books the NYT thinks should be bestsellers -- and rarely reflects the regional bestseller lists. Check out the San Francisco Chronicle list versus the NYT list. The differences are remarkable in most cases. Of course, some books are real bestsellers and deserve to be on the list, but others are simply there because their publishers convinced NYT to add the book to their prospective list. There are a lot of things that the major publishers do to manipulate such bestseller lists.

10. I saw one bestseller promotion done on B&N.com that allowed the book not only to become a bestseller online but also in the stores as a whole. The book remained one of the top 1,000 bestsellers at B&N.com for months afterwards. Was the promotion worthwhile? You bet it was.

11. I really don't know what to say to people who think that such campaigns are "manipulating the system and not playing fair." Such campaigns are simply working within the system as it is set. Why is it more fair to ignore the system and beg for notice in some other way?

12. Any bestseller campaign only works if it is part of an integrated marketing plan. Doing an Amazon.com campaign is really worthless if you are not doing some other things to help keep your book high on the list. For most of the past 5 to 10 years, my 1001 Ways to Market Your Books has hovered between 4,000 and 10,000 in the Amazon bestseller list. Right now, it's around 100,000 only because Amazon is not selling the book anymore because I'm down to about 100 copies and won't reprint until the new edition is ready. BUT I'm selling 2-3 copies every day because I list that I have copies for sale. I get more money per book this way, but then I do have to ship them out as well. I'd rather Amazon.com did this, but for now it's still allowing me to sell my book on Amazon.com until I run out of copies of the current 5th edition.

13. Have you ever tried to get Amazon.com to change something in your listing? I tell you it's nigh to impossible. They list the 5th edition as published in 2001. Well, its publication date is 1998. Even worse, they have a review of my book that is completely inaccurate, saying that I said things in the book I never said. Things that contradict each other. I've written Amazon.com many times to try to get it corrected but, alas, no sale. Perhaps when the new edition comes out, they'll get it right.

14. I will be doing an Amazon.com bestseller campaign for the 6th edition of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books. And I will hold my head up high the whole time.

15. Do you think that Scholastic was manipulating the system when they embargoed any book sales until the publication date for the latest Harry Potter book? Oh, dear yes, they were manipulating the system. And it worked perfectly. They got news stories for weeks leading up to pub date, and even more news stories afterwards. Were they cheating? No way. But if you call the Amazon.com strategy cheating, then you'd have to call their strategy cheating as well. Both strategies manipulate the system by working within the system. Would Harry Potter have been a bestseller without the manipulation? Sure, absolutely. Would it have gotten all the run-up and follow-up publicity without the manipulation? The answer is no. They would have gotten a lot, but probably 50% of what they did. Would it have affected the sales numbers? Yes, perhaps by as many as a million copies. At least during the first few days of the frenzy, but the sales simply would have come later.

16. It took The DaVinci Code more than a year to sell 7 million copies. It took the new Potter book two days or so. Is either book a great book? In some people's minds, yes. In some others, no way.

17. Bridges of Madison Country was a bestseller for over two years. Is it a great novel? No way. Did it reflect real-life Iowa? Hardly. Did people cry when reading the book? Oh, dear yes. And the book had incredible word of mouth for such a poorly written novel. Does your book deserve to be a bestseller? Compare your novel to either Bridges or DaVinci and I'm sure that most of you can make a case that your novel is better. I know hundreds of novels myself that have been published in the past 10 years that stand head and shoulders over these bestsellers.

18. Why shouldn't these novels have a chance to call themselves bestsellers, even if for just an hour? Won't we all be richer if we discover a new book that is so much better than anything the major New York publishers publish? I've compared the books published by the larger publishers versus those published by indie publishers and, in almost every case, the books from the indie publishers are better. Better information, better written, more timely. Should we let the New York publishers manipulate the bestseller system and stand by and say "It is good" without trying to do the best we can to draw attention to our better books? Well, I won't stand still.

19. Again, any bestseller campaign should be part of an integrated marketing plan that can make use of the campaign within the context of everything else you are doing to promote your book.

20. Being a bestseller does not guarantee a good book, a good read, or anything else. Most people in the industry know this. Most of the books are the NYT bestseller list are simply promoted to that status. Few get there by other means. Some good books do make it on the list, but most of these start by being promoted by hand by good independent booksellers. But there are authors way past their prime who still get on the bestseller lists with poorly written or uninteresting reads simply because of their past history. Many nonfiction books make the bestseller list simply because of the author's celebrity (which never guarantees a good book) or because of other costly promotions. If you've watched the lists for very long, you know that the best books don't rise to the top. Never have, never will. The books that rise to the top have done so because the publisher and author promoted the hell out of the book. Is that cheating? Is that a scam? Well, gosh, it must be. How could we be so fooled all these years? And by the sacrosanct New York Times!

21. Who ever thought that actor Jimmy Stewart's poems were the best written during the year they were published? Did anyone buy into that idea? Of course, not. We know that bestseller lists don't have anything to do with whether a book is good or not. Word of mouth matters much more. When our friends and family tell us to buy a book, that's when we do it. No bestseller campaign can do more than get the book into some peoples' hands so, if they like it, they can pass the word on to their family and friends. That's what made the Chicken Soup books sell. I know because I had to buy dozens of copies for my wife to give to her family and friends.

22. Well, obviously I'm a little riled up by someone who calls my integrity into question. I see nothing wrong with working within a system to sell books. The Amazon.com campaign idea is not a scam, it is not cheating, it is not manipulation. It is, in a very real way, simply working within the system as defined by Amazon.com. And, yes, announcing that your book is an Amazon.com bestseller does not have the power now that it once did because people know that the system can be worked -- and at very little cost in money and time. If the NYT bestseller list could be worked the same way, with very little cost in money and time, more people would be doing that as well. But right now, the NYT list manipulation does cost a lot more money and time, which the New York publishers do all the time. Both lists, you can say have been cheated, spammed, and manipulated. But apparently it's okay to do so with the NYT list as long as you spend a lot of money and time. Why is one "manipulation" worse than the other? Why is one ignored where the other scandalizes people? To me, that is what is so unfair. That's what scandalizes me.

23. Have a good day. Remember: All marketing should be fun or you shouldn't do it. If you like what you are doing and if you love your book, then whatever action you take on behalf of your book should be fun. Enjoy that.

24. Ultimately, all marketing is building relationships. No bestseller campaign will produce good results if you don't build upon them to create true relationships with your readers, your distribution partners, and the media.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

He's a relatively new author: two books published, a third at the publisher, and a fourth on the way. All featuring the same character Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels. I'm going to have to check his novels out. The interview made them seem like funny and involving reads.

He is a novelist who knows that promotion is an important part of the game. He spends 20% of his time writing and 80% promoting his books. You don't have to follow his example to be a successful author, but you do have to put some percentage of your time into promotion, whether it's 80% like Joe or 20%.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Warren Whitlock had an incredible idea. Why not tie into the media and consumer interest in the new Harry Potter book, which sold millions of copies. What did he do to piggy-back on this publicity and interest? Very simple. He created a blog about the book's marketing. Gosh, I wish I had thought to do that. He picked up hundreds of links to his web site as a result of his simple (and time-limited) blog.

Not only does he get all these links, but he doesn't have to maintain this blog for very long to get all the value that he has already gotten in less than ten days.

Monday, July 25, 2005

I just read a post on Seth Godin's blog where he provides his five most important tips to authors. He gets asked a lot of questions by authors because he's a bestselling author who has written some great books. To read his advice, check out his blog here: Seth Godin's blog.

Sunday, July 24, 2005

Did you know that you could add extra photos of your book (and you) on your book page at Amazon.com? They invite customers to add photos. You, as the author or publisher, are just as welcome as anyone else to add more photos.

Saturday, July 23, 2005

At MediaBistro.com, the Tuesday MB Toolbox blog featured a short tip on how to get your letter to the editor featured in the New York Times. It offers some great succinct tips that should increase your chances for success in writing letters to the editor of any newspaper. Take a look here: http://www.mediabistro.com.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Question: Can you please summarize what big mistakes almost all publishers make selling books via an Amazon.com bestseller campaign?

John's Answer: The biggest mistake authors or publishers make in trying to become an Amazon.com bestseller is simple: They don't line up enough owners of lists who are committed to sending out the promotional message about the book.

The second biggest mistake: They don't line up enough partners who are giving away something nice for those people who place an order for the author's book.

An Amazon bestseller campaign only works if there are enough bonuses to encourage potential buyers to act right away. And if enough people get the message so the author can make a dent in the Amazon sales.

There is no shortcut to make this happen. You can't rent lists. You can't settle for mailing to just three or four lists. You need at least 15 to 20 lists to make a dent. And you can't provide all the bonuses yourself. That simply does not work. Because then you do not have any incentive for other list owners to mail to their customers. The only reason a list owner announces a new Amazon.com bestseller book promotion is in the expectation of adding to his or her list via the giveaways that he will send out as part of the overall promotion.

Each participating list owner offers something free — a report, an audio MP3, an e-book — that can be fulfilled via email. When the recipients of the Amazon.com promotion buy the promoted book, they also are sent the other free items, either via a download link at the list owner's site or via email from the list owner providing the free item.

It is the obligation of the person carrying out the promotion to share the emails of everyone who bought a copy of the book as a result of the promotion. It is those email addresses that the various participating list owners can add to their lists.

The list owner, thus, gains two valuable assets by participating in the Amazon.com promotion. 1. He gets to add the names of the people who bought the book (these are good names because they are the names of people who bought via email notice). 2. He gets to expose these buyers to his work via the item that he is giving away free. If your report or e-book is good, chances are that the person will want to buy something else from you.

That's the key elements of a good Amazon.com bestseller promotion. And in almost every case where such a promotion has failed, it's either because there are not enough list owners involved (with a cumulative list total of 100,000 or more) or because the freebies are not enticing enough to get the potential buyer to act right away. In both cases, the fault is in the bookselling promoter who was not willing to go out and sell his promotion to targeted list owners with something valuable to give away to potential buyers (something that the buyers want as much as the promoter's book).

If you want to learn more about how to carry out an Amazon.com Bestseller Campaign, listen in to a teleseminar being given by Steve Harrison where he will be interviewing Randy Gilbert and Peggy McColl, two experts who help people create such campaigns. The teleseminar is this Wednesday (July 20) at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time. To register, go to: http://www.freepublicity.com/Amazon/?10005.

Saturday, July 16, 2005

If one becomes #1 on B&N (through the Internet promotion we all know how to do), does being #1 or in the top 10 have the same cache as being a top seller on amazon?

John's Answer: It is easier to become a #1 bestseller on BN.com (or http://www.barnesandnoble.com) for one simple reason: B&N doesn't have as much business so any business you send their way will have greater impact than via Amazon.

But, alas, B&N is now on a rampage against authors or publishers manipulating their bestseller list. Indeed, while at the National Speakers Association convention, I heard of one author who had gotten the B&N buyers to place a 1700-copy order BECAUSE he was going to be doing a B&N bestseller campaign via the Internet. When the B&N brass heard about it, they cancelled the orders that had been generated by the campaign. They cut the orders because they did not want anyone tricking out their bestseller lists.

Since this apparently is now B&N's policy, you should use the Amazon.com strategy. Amazon isn't going to turn away any orders, no matter how they are generated.

The B&N uppity-ups, on the other hand, have decided that they don't want the business right now. Alas. Poor them.

To register for a class on how to implement an Amazon.com bestseller campaign, start by listening an the upcoming teleseminar to be held on Wednesday, July 20th, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time. Register here: http://www.FreePublicity.com/Amazon/?10005.

Friday, July 15, 2005

The reviewers' websites from both Part I and Part II are at the end of this column.

2) Do Authors Make Better Reviewers?

“Since I am an author,” says Carolyn Scheidies, “I have insight into the heart of story construction as well as the heart of the author.”

“I find that authors usually make better reviewers,” says Mayra Calvani, “for the simple fact that they are more conscious of what writing a book is all about and are better able to explain the dynamics of a book, the technical aspects of it, and give a more thoughtful, critical evaluation.”

Author of The Art of Assessment: How to Review Anything (Mountain Mist Productions, 2002), Maggie Ball likens reviewers to authors since “all reviews are pieces of creative writing.” Moreover, she feels that writing and reviewing books of the same genre provides “a much more intimate understanding of the processes involved….It may also make a reviewer more sympathetic and less harsh - more likely to carefully back up criticisms.”

Reviewers who are authors, says Bob Spear, “will have a clearer understanding of the writing process,” and less likely to suffer writer’s block, says Cheryl McCann.

“I've a better understanding of the process an author goes through in writing a book, says Cindy Vallar, author of The Scottish Thistle (NovelBooks 2002). “I can better assess whether the author did the research and knows his/her craft. For me, the greatest advantage has been seeing how my writing skills have improved over the years. I always check the published review over what I wrote to see how the editor changed it. In doing so, I've honed my skills, and, since many of my assignments have maximum word lengths of 200-300 words, my writing is concise.”

3) And what about payment?

The consensus is that book reviewers are generally not compensated. “Almost nobody can make a living from only writing reviews,” states Mayra Calvani, co-author a forthcoming book about writing reviews. “Personally, I like the system of the book itself being payment enough,” says Dehanna Bailee. Shirley Johnson agrees. “I receive no monetary reward for my reviews, nor do I expect that to happen anytime in the future…” Compensation would be “two-edge sword,” she adds, since she’d lose the freedom “to enjoy all the wonderful unknown works that I now have the pleasure to read.”

Staffers and freelance reviewers at a publication will sometimes get paid. Judith Colombo, for instance, has a bi-weekly column in The Weekly Gleaner, the North-American version of a leading Jamaican newspaper, and receives payment when the review is published. Heather Grove expects to be paid and will only post her reviews at Amazon and Epinions, two main sources of income. Heather Froeschl is adamant about getting paid – much like “any writer anywhere expects payment for their services,” she says. “Compare the reading of a book to doing research for an article and the effort is much the same, at least on my part. Compare the writing of a review to the copy writing of an advertising writer…The effort and skill, and the time spent is much the same, again, at least on my part.”

“I have never been paid for my reviews,” says Cindy Vallar. “I don't want to compromise my opinions or be forced into giving a good review when I don't think the book merits it. While I don't trash a bad book or attack its author, I do let my readers know that a book fails to measure up to my standards and why, giving examples where applicable to back up my conclusions. As a reader, I'm not sure I'd trust a reviewer as much if they received payment for a review. I'm not speaking about reviewers who earn a living from third parties, such as newspapers or magazines as an employee or freelancer, though. My cousin, who reviews children's books, is nationally syndicated but authors and publishers don't pay for her reviews.

Finally, Lana Jordan questions whether staff reviewers are legitimate. “I’ve seen book review services advertised to authors that don’t even guarantee a positive review,” she says. “I can’t imagine that anyone would be willing to pay in the neighborhood of $300 or more, even for a good review. But throw in the possibility of a bad review, and there’s no way. That’s highway robbery. No one should be that desperate!”

Francine Silverman is editor/publisher of Book Promotion Newsletter, a bi-weekly ezine for authors of all genres, and author of Book Marketing from A-Z (Infinity Publishing, 2005), a compilation of the best marketing strategies of 325 authors from all over the English-speaking world. Web: http://www.bookpromotionnewsletter.com.

Follow this outline and you'll create a great sales letter. Include a few stories, some detailed testimonials, and a lot of soulful honesty and you'll knock the socks off your readers -- and they'll want to buy.

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Amazon.com is asking book publishers to send them your digital audiobooks. Now!

Amazon is developing a new store to offer downloadable audiobooks to its customers. If you are a publisher of audiobooks or other spoken audio content and would like your products to be included in their store, email them at digital-audio@amazon.com.

That's all it takes to find out more. Do it today if you already have any MP3s of books, seminars, talks, chapters, ebooks, etc.

Sunday, July 03, 2005

Question: I am looking for on line directory of book publishers that provides the publishers web site URL. A list that is public, offering free access, and that does not require being a member of an association.

It would be terrific if the listing also offered information on the number of titles and company size. I am looking for Book publishers, not journals, not magazines, and not newspapers. Companies that are publishers as distinct from printing companies.

Any suggestions for Google key words that would be useful in narrowing down a search to locate Book publishers with 40 or more titles, English Language publications, will be appreciated.

John's Answer: On my web site at bookmarket.com, I feature more than 1,400 editors and publishers of first novels, children's books, business books, health books, sports books, reference/humor titles, cookbooks, and religion/spirituality. Those lists are free. They do not include number of titles or company size, but all publish more than one title; most publish anywhere from ten to thousands of titles.

RadioPRGuy.com - "When you decide that you're ready to start dealing with radio stations directly, get Alex Carroll's program. His top radio show database, tapes of dealing with producers, and examples of actual talk shows will help you to become a radio talk show star." - John Kremer

About John Kremer

John Kremer is an expert on book publishing and book marketing. Besides being the owner of a publishing company (Open Horizons in Taos, New Mexico), he is the editor of the Book Marketing Tip of the Week newsletter.